SC concerned over no improvement in Delhi's sex ratio

The Supreme Court today expressed serious concern over lack of improvement in the sex ratio in the national capital and passed a slew of directions on the issue of female foeticide including the need to form a statutory board for strict implementation of law prohibiting sex determination.
"There has been really no improvement in the sex ratio", a bench of Justice Dipak Misra and Prafulla C Pant said while directing the authorities to act with "strictness" against those violating the law against sex determination.
The bench was anguished that Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of sex selection) Act has been in operational from 1994 but only 44 cases have been instituted and certain cases are pending in various courts in Delhi since 2002 onwards.

After perusing various data on sex ratio of Delhi from 2001 to 2011, the court noted that there were 821 females per 1000 males in 2001 and it has become 866 females per 1000 males as per provisional data of census, 2011.
While the sex ratio of children aged upto six years went down marginally from 868 as per census 2001 to 866 as per census 2011.
The average count of girl child (0-6 years) in the country has dropped to 914 per 1000 boys, according to the Census 2011, compared to 927 in the 2001 Census.

Taking note of the facts, the bench passed several directions for proper implementation of provisions of the Act which also mandates setting up of a State Board.

While asking authorities to act with strictness, the bench said "the appropriate authority shall, as defined under Section 28 and is appointed under Section 17 of the 1994 Act, develop a system so that anyone, who comes to know of any illegality being committed under the 1994 Act by any person, can send the complaint/information to the said authority even anonimously so that it can take appropriate action."
"Needless to say that there has to be appropriate verification. This can really apprise the appropriate authority about certain things happenning in a clandestine manner," it said.